Amazon Retail Bookstores- How Amazon is Planning to Succeed in Offline Book Markets

13 February, 2017

How Amazon Startled the e-Commerce Fraternity by Opening a Brick and Mortar Book Store?

The e-commerce world was taken aback by the irony which hit the markets in November 2015 few months back.Amazon which is one of the leaders of e-commerce in the global market has flabbergasted the e-commerce experts by opening a brick and mortar bookstore in Seattle.

Amazon: Retail Bookstore

Amazon Retail Book Stores

Will it open more such bookstores around the globe?How many more bookstores would Amazon open now?Will it open physical stores for other categories as well?Why would it open a brick and mortar store? Is e-commerce plunging now or need support with physical stores to keep running? Will it again promote mall culture and traditional buying and backfire for e-commerce world or will it help it grow more?All such questions are blowing the minds of the audience and newbies which look us to the biggies for strategy and planning for their e-commerce business.

How many Retail Bookstores will Amazon Open?

Amazon is currently hiring for a new Amazon Books bookstore in Southern California that has yet to be announced, according to job listings.One listing, for an Amazon Books assistant store manager in La Jolla or San Diego, says:

“You love the excitement of running a bookstore. You have a flair for leading teams and adjusting your leadership style based on the situation. You enjoy reading and keep yourself updated on the latest in the digital devices front. You are part of the store leadership team.”

There are no immediate plans for a rollout of 300 to 400 stores, two sources say, but they could not rule out that eventual outcome. The mall company CEO who originally asserted those numbers released a statement on Wednesday saying his comment “was not intended to represent Amazon’s plans.”

In addition to its college campus stores and the new Seattle bookstore, Amazon currently operates pop-up shops in some California malls and Amazon device vending machines in some airports."We've applied 20 years of online book-selling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping," Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books, said in a statement:

"The books in our store are selected based on Amazon.com customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators' assessments."

Why Amazon wants to Enter the Retail Book Markets?

What could be so different about a bookstore by Amazon? What could be more discreet as compared to other contemporary stores.What inspires Amazon to enter retail market when it has been ruling the e-commerce space and giving a tough fight to the retailers. Not even a fight it is like a winning scenario for e-commerce stores. As retail sector is struggling real hard since the dawn of e-commerce.Physical stores are all about instant gratification. Having the product right away instantly as soon as you buy it. There is no match to it. For those who shop for gratifying their sense still shop in physical stores more as per a study. So Amazon also wants to trap those slipping fishes as much as it seems from its bold stride of opening up a retail bookstore.It could backfire also according to many experts as online shopping is still not as gratifying as traditional shopping and if the leaders would promote store culture e-commerce may lose the charms and glow which it has managed to earn by struggling a lot in past few years.Bookstore sales in 2014 dropped to their lowest levels in two decades. By the end of the year, receipts were down more than 2.7 percent from where they were in 1995, when Amazon first began selling books online. And brick-and-mortar stores sales in the first nine months of 2015 fell short of sales during the same period in 2014, suggesting this year will end up being even worse than last.Major brick-and-mortar retail chains like Borders, Waldenbooks, Atlantic Books and B. Dalton began hemorrhaging money when people backed off physical book-buying, forcing thousands of storefronts to shutter. E-books, meanwhile, have exploded in recent years as tablets and digital reading devices have become more popular. More than 510 million e-books were sold in 2014, according to an annual report from the Association of American Publishers.That's just shy of the number of hardback books sold in the same year (568 million) and doesn't even count books read through subscription services like Scribd and Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. Revenue from e-book sales ballooned 3.8 percent in 2014 to $3.37 billion.In a separate report earlier this year, the association said e-book sales were down 10.3 percent in the first half of 2015 from the same period a year earlier. But companies participating with the group reportedly accounted for only 32 percent of all Kindle books sold – which was down significantly from February 2014. So that 10 percent decline came within a shrinking subset of the e-book market.So while we still figure out why Amazon is eyeing retail market it might plan more such stores in multiple categories. We do not know whether it would be a success or not but for sure it will change something or the other in e-commerce and retail markets.